The Message of Dawn

The meaning of the petroglyph

escapes me it is as familiar as the sky

but its sense lies beyond my reach

the rock stands blackened with age

deep strokes of the knife

reveal the pink flesh of stone

underneath the shaman’s headdress

his story recedes into the past like ceremonies

locked into secret vaults into graves moved yearly

toward the rising sun turning on its axis

an illusion only we can know

but we will not forsake its meaning

of a day a night time’s cycles winter spring

the past an ever-lingering future

I touch the warrior’s triangular body

supported by ant legs

no one has created more than what is imagined

enmeshed in fancy as Coleridge called it

caught up in the epic force

of every era except our own

locked into its mindless rituals

of nihilism vital meaning lost

forever on the wind

forever unseen by the hawk

forever formidable in the petroglyph’s movements

in and out of the primordial light of dawn

always dawn making its own loud message

I can no longer hear